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Swiss voters look set to vote on the country’s weapons export rules after opponents of the current laws collected enough signatures to trigger a referendum on the issue.

Organisers of the “Against the export of arms to countries in the midst of civil war” referendum (here in French) said on Wednesday they had collected over 130,000 signatures in six months and that these would be submitted to the Federal Chancellery next month for approval.

Plans for the referendum were launched by a cross-party group after the Swiss government controversially announced its intention to relax rules for the sale of arms to countries engaged in an "internal armed conflict" as long as “there is no reason to believe that the war materiel to be exported will be used in an internal armed conflict”.

The government stressed Swiss arms would not be sent to countries in the throes of civil war like Yemen and Syria.

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